Security systems can be significantly adversely impacted by rain, snow, sleet, wind, and extreme temperatures. To function properly, security systems depend on high sensitivity and low false alarm rates, but external factors such as weather and time of day can, in some cases, have significant effects. For example, passive infrared sensors need to be less sensitive when the scene is snow covered, to avoid generating false alarms due to the movement of small animals. Similarly, fence motion sensors need to be less sensitive on windy days. In the absence of video surveillance, security system operators can not easily determine if an alarm is valid or false, necessitating that every alarm be investigated. As a result, security systems are often de-tuned and operate at less than maximum detection capability in order to minimize the false alarm rate. Some types of security systems record data over a period of time to learn a baseline for “normal” sensor data and then generate alerts when readings are outside of the normal range. Changing weather situations require these types of systems to broaden the “normal” range to accommodate all weather conditions.
It would be of great advantage if a means could be provided to significantly reduce false alarms due to weather.
It would be another advantage in the art if additional data could be provided to security systems using existing surveillance cameras associated with the facility.
It would be another advantage if adaptive systems could take into account weather information in their baseline rather than having to broaden the baseline.
Yet another advantage would be if weather data, existing surveillance data and time of day could be coordinated to adjust or augment the normal security system to provide more reliable alarm data and significantly reduce false alarms.
Still another advantage would be if a system for augmenting security systems could be developed that would increase reliability without adding significant costs to the systems being augmented.
Other advantages will appear hereinafter.